A well-established setting enriches this unhurried but worthwhile whodunit.
In Marriott’s mystery sequel, a retired homicide detective reluctantly investigates a murder in Greece.
Vathy, on the Greek island of Ithaca, has been Virgil Colvin’s home for two years. He left the Chicago Police Department after his wife died and has since fallen in love with Eurydice Pantakalas, to whom he’s now engaged. However, Vathy police chief Costas Pantakalas, Virgil’s friend and Eurydice’s cousin, gets married first, and the newlyweds’ honeymoon includes meeting up with Virgil and Eurydice in the Greek peninsula town of Monemvasia. They dine at a local restaurant with a large group arranged by a Greek billionaire, and the meal turns into a politically charged debate involving climate activists and a journalist. The next day, one of the dinner guests, Theodoric Künz, the chair of Byzantine history at Harvard University, is found dead, his body badly burned. Just because Virgil investigated a murder last year on Ithaca—as chronicled in the previous series entry, The School of Homer (2023)—doesn’t mean he wants anything to do with this latest one. However, Costas and Eurydice’s coaxing, and his own growing interest, causes him to look closer at the case, with the aim of unmasking a killer. Initially, Marriott’s sophomore series installment moves at a slow, deliberate pace, not unlike the quieter island life that Virgil seems to enjoy. The extended dinner scene deftly introduces characters who go on to become suspects or potential future victims, and the killer’s motive isn’t immediately clear. It’s entertaining to watch Virgil in detective mode, sleuthing with Costas, who’s technically still on his honeymoon, and Monemvasia chief inspector Spyros Liourdis. Due to the fact there’s not much evidence, aside from one key element of the crime scene, the three investigators lead a string of interrogations, and piece together, or pull apart, developing theories. Greece, meanwhile, isn’t merely a backdrop—its rich history and culture, and its memorable sites, continually fuel the narrative. The final act culminates in a satisfying revelation, followed by a delightful tease for the third installment.
A well-established setting enriches this unhurried but worthwhile whodunit.Pub Date: June 26, 2025
ISBN: 9781836710417
Page Count: 342
Publisher: Vanguard Press
Review Posted Online: July 7, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Enough clues, red herrings, and false endings to make readers feel that the Orient Express has put out to sea.
A luxury liner bound for New York in 1924 becomes the scene of a twisty golden age pastiche.
When an unnamed third-class passenger discovers the body of an elderly man at the bottom of an exterior flight of stairs aboard the Endeavour, Capt. McCrory insists it must be an accident. But James Temple, a Scotland Yard detective who just happens to be aboard, says that no one would have ventured to the outdoor steps in the rain without a coat, so the death should be treated as suspicious. Unable to stop Temple from investigating, McCrory assigns ship’s officer Timothy Birch to accompany him, and Birch promptly becomes the world’s most unwilling Dr. Watson, constantly battling Temple over theories and procedures. Anxious that they have only four days to find a potential killer before the ship docks and lets its 2,000 passengers roam free in New York, he’s especially infuriated at the leisurely pace marked by Temple’s bromide, “Facts before witnesses.” There’s reason to sympathize with Temple, because the suspects in first and second class (the only classes that matter in this ultra-class-conscious world) are cardboard cutouts—the successful banker, his trophy wife, the aspiring artists, the gallery owner—who are much less interesting than the secrets they’re hiding. In his most anachronistic development, author Hindle shows Birch, unlike the imperturbable sidekicks he echoes, sunk in grief over his vanished daughter, Amelia, and his estranged wife, Kate, who left him after Amelia disappeared during one of his ocean voyages. He’d do anything to get his daughter back, he tells Temple, and his determination leads to the biggest surprise of all.
Enough clues, red herrings, and false endings to make readers feel that the Orient Express has put out to sea.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9798217185740
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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